Out100: Denis O'Hare

By Out.com Editors Nov. 7, 2013, 1:10 a.m.

Photography by Danielle Levitt

The fact that he’s always playing nasty characters hasn’t gone unnoticed by O’Hare. “I probably killed in excess of 587 people on True Blood,” he quips, referring to his vampire character, Russell Edgington, on HBO’s popular supernatural sudser.

He’s also returned to Ryan Murphy’s creepy American Horror Story anthology TV series this season, after appearing as a barely recognizable burn victim in the first season. Then there’s the sinister, one-legged evangelical minister who chides Jonathan Groff in this fall’s C.O.G., the movie adaptation of a David Sedaris story. But this year, he also worked on two important films about the AIDS epidemic.

“It was funny being able to do Dallas Buyers Club on the one hand, and then The Normal Heart on the other,” he says. In both he once again plays less-than-likable characters, but that doesn’t seem to faze the upbeat O’Hare, who, along with his husband, is in the process of adopting his foster son. “They shot The Normal Heartout at Fire Island at one point, and there’s Ryan Murphy on the beach in what looked like a black caftan, lolling on a towel, directing away. It was just so, so fantastic.”